


burning hearts and crimson dreams (nothing is as it seems)

by lostandlonelybirds (RUNNFROMTHEAK)



Category: Batman (Comics), Constantine: The Hellblazer (Comics), Justice League Dark (Comics), Zatanna (Comics)
Genre: Alp Demon, Angst, Barely relevant, Batman: Reborn, Bittersweet Ending, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson is Batman, Dick Grayson is Damian Wayne’s Parent, Exes, F/M, Fun fact: everyone in this fic except for Alfred has severe Daddy issues, Hallucinations, Haunted Houses, I'm not playing with that, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Insanity, It was not a happy split you guys, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, John Constantine Needs A Hug, M/M, Magic Bringing the Trauma, Mental Health Issues, No Beta We Die Like My Will To Finish Fics Which Is Why This Is Late, Past Character Death, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, Post-Break Up, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror, Supernatural Elements, Unhappy Ending, Zatanna Zatara Needs a Hug, but i need that known, my b
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:55:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28633608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/lostandlonelybirds
Summary: The third time Dick doesn’t notice It, but It notices him. Red-litten windows wink at his back, shadows dancing gracefully to a harmony none but It hears. The pale door, dirty and dim, watches him carefully. Watches him meet a man in a gleaming red helmet, watches the snarls and vitriol and hate spread between them like blessings from a priest spread to an undeserving mass. It simmers quietly, indulgently, and It hums. It hums a melody the shadows change to, flickering and formless as they are, and the pale door creaks open a tad more.Even a mansion of madness and decay such as It cannot call attention away from those enraptured by the past, and they are nothing if not mutually distracted.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd, John Constantine/Zatanna Zatara
Comments: 18
Kudos: 66
Collections: Detective Holiday Exchange





	burning hearts and crimson dreams (nothing is as it seems)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Harishe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harishe/gifts).



> Canon is my bitch so I mixed everything for Zatanna and Constantine (BIG THANKS TO MX FOR THE INFO ON CONSTANTINE FRONT!!!) together into a timeline I will never elaborate on and we all are going to just have to deal with that. Dick, Jason, Damian, and Alfred follow Reborn timeline with the addition that Jason and Dick did date before B conked it and went spiraling back through time because the Drama Queen(TM) of the family needs a big mid-life crisis ig. That being said, read the tags. Please. Do that. 
> 
> Hari, you asked for angst, and I'm sorry this is so late. In my defense, my brain and I were constantly arguing over how long this could be and I rewrote it at least three times. So. Yes.  
> (also thank you to crow, you know what you done did, and epi for all the help and cheerleading)
> 
> List of Influences:  
> HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, Richard Siken, and above all else Poe's short story The Fall of the House of Usher. As in, I literally borrow the appearance and some quotes from the Fall of the House of Usher and the poem inside it, which is quoted in the text itself.
> 
> I hope everyone suffers as I have <3

***

_"And travellers now, within that valley,_

_Through the red-litten windows see_

_Vast forms, that move fantastically_

_To a discordant melody,_

_While, like a ghastly rapid river,_

_Through the pale door_

_A hideous throng rush out forever_

_And laugh — but smile no more."_

_-_ Edgar Allen Poe, _The Haunted Palace_

***

The manor sits alone on a hill at the gates of a graveyard, covered in thick, thorny vines. Black roses bloom along their lengths, interspersed with purple bushels of nightshade. The manor itself is a decayed beauty; darkened walls crumbling at the corners, masonry cracked down the center, overgrown foliage surrounding broken marble statues rotting and lifeless. It's a late autumn night, dying leaves crunched beneath their boots as they step onto the grounds. Damian points it out to Dick first, brow raised:

"How very Victorian London of them. Is it new? I can't recall it from our prior patrols."

Dick shrugs, walking between rows of graves up the winding bath towards its rusty gates. Damian follows close behind, curious and adorable with his rosy cheeks, and they take it all in slowly. Carefully.

"It looks old," Dick says quietly, but his voice is carried by the wind. To him, it sounds almost like a howl, the sound of a shutter slamming against a wall in a storm. "But...I don't remember it being here before either."

Damian shivers and Dick does too, goosebumps raised on his flesh as he touches the wrought iron gates. Cold seeps into his skin like shards of ice, making a home in his blood. For a second, a moment, he hears her voice lilted in a mockery of affection:

 _Querido_.

Dick pulls back as if burned, fright thick and heady in his racing pulse. A quick glance at the window shows her outline - dark colors splayed against a fabric of rain and night - but she's dead. He knows she's dead. It takes a minute for the image to realign with reality, to see the flicker of candlelight and twisting shadows of an object rather than a woman.

"Richard?"

Damian's jade eyes glint at him worriedly, prodding touch gentle for all the faked annoyance. Dick berates himself silently for it, for putting any doubt in Damian when he's the only stability Dami has left. Too far in his own head, too spooked by the small things now.

"I'm fine, Little D. Were you worried about your big brother?"

"Tt. Hardly."

Lucky for Dick, Riddler is quick to pick up on the need for a subject change and hacks the police radio, announcing his very intelligent, very brilliant, idiot-proof puzzles guaranteed to kill them involving at least three types of deadly metal, two poisons, and a giant anvil Damian tackles him out of the way of.

Damian manages to solve them thirty seconds before Dick does, and he’s so overwhelmingly _proud_ of his kid that he buys him ice cream at his favorite shop and teases him about girls at school. It's a quiet night, and he enjoys nights like this most of all with Damian, high on the city's skyline with scoops of cold delights and nothing to worry about beyond crooks. It's a slice of normality he craves, like pizza nights and pajama parties with the Titans in the past. Before things became all too real and all too harsh.

By the time he tucks Damian in, pressing a quick kiss to his forehead and leaving before Damian can smack him, he's forgotten all about the house on a hill surrounded by acres of rotting tissue and old bones. Why would he think of it, after all, when he hadn't stayed long enough to see its effects?

* * *

She's late. She's late as hell for her afternoon shift, and she's going to get fired and _fuck_ if she doesn't need this job. So she does what every Gothamite worth their salt knows not to do: she takes a shortcut. Jessica justifies it in her head with every twist and turn because it's daylight, Joker's in Arkham, there haven't been many missing persons lately. Less murder. Less crime overall.

(Because, in the back of her head and her heart of hearts, she really believes Batman and Robin will protect her.)

She darts up and down the busy streets, red curls darting in her face despite her best efforts, and tells herself everything will be fine.

Of course, in a city like Gotham, nothing is ever _truly_ fine when you look deeper, when you get to the heart of that first glance and see the rot down to the city's roots.

Jessica crosses into an unfamiliar plot of land between a quick blink of her eyes, the noise and stink of the city somewhere distant and beyond her now. She checks her phone with a curse, groaning when the time blinks to the start of her shift. She moves forward still, pressing on, looking for something familiar. She knows this city well, with the familiarity of an alley kid who didn't die that way, but she can't say she knows it perfectly.

"Hello?" she calls out, throat cold and bare to the wind.

No reply is offered, so she walks up the winding path outlined in black petals and dying leaves. Her heels clack loudly in the otherwise silent air, harsh light glaring down on her as though her presence is deeply offensive. Jessica shields her eyes, squinting at the manor gates as they press open with a tiny application of force, and the pale door they reveal in their wake. 

The manor itself reminds her of the old black and white films she'd watch on store TVs growing up, the ones with vampires and fake blood and jumpscares that had given her weeks' worth of nightmares. Candlelight glints through the thin shade the drapes covering the windows offer, a beacon Jessica follows hesitantly. She feels cold, the closer she gets, like phantom flakes of snow melting on bared skin even through the layers of clothing she'd piled on this morning.

The pale door is warm as her knuckles brush against it, a polite knock she's well-practiced at.

"Anyone home?" she questions, but no reply is offered except for a slight creak, and the jostling of a doorknob.

Something in her gut sinks, and when she's greeted with an entrance void of people, Jessica feels the warning bells go off in the back of her mind. Despite the growing dread, something pushes her forward, guiding her towards the light dancing across the entrance's walls from another room. It's dark in here even with the candles, as dark as a cloudy midnight sky devoid of starlight.

Before she reaches the room, Jessica's eyes catch an etching in the floor, gold-plated and well-maintained. It seems new, despite the abandoned feel its surroundings offer, and reminds her of something she can't quite recall, something on the tip of her tongue:

 _House of_ _Usher._

Her blood stains the gold etching before she can remember, and her screams echo the cavernous halls like the cries of a pig being gutted. 

The manor would smile if it could, and by the time it moves, the plaque is already clean once more.

* * *

Dick notices the manor again on a solo patrol, across town from where he’d first seen it. His reflection flickers in the murky depths of a pond, something inky and webbed with dark eyes and a darker heart. He shakes his head, pulling away from the pond, and looks at the manor once more. Unassuming, at first glance, with boarded-up windows and cracked glass. Dead greenery and broken signs of opulence and grandeur as much symbols of the past as consequences of them.

A stray wind sends chills through his borrowed suit – the unwanted mantle of a dead father – and he looks, just once, at the front door. It’s a pale thing, grime-covered and dirt ridden with overgrown vines wrapped around it precariously. He imagines it once shown white, like a light at the end of a tunnel, but it’s too dirty to tell if it still can. The door, as if in response to his stare, creaks open. A summons, if only imagined, sugar-sweet in his mind:

 _Dear heart,_ it might say. 

_Querido_ , it might say again.

Dick leaves at once.

* * *

The next visitor isn't quite as hesitant, as trusting in goodness as humanity dares to be. Unassuming and naive, childlike in all but age. He isn't from Gotham, that much is clear, he smells like fresh air and apple pie - a visitor to see what America's cesspool of insanity has to offer, maybe, or a visitor to see family and friends unlucky enough to end up in Gotham.

His car breaks down in front of the manor, pale moon full and beautiful amidst the polluted sky of unseen stars. He smiles at it, despite the troubles, and indulges in it for a moment too long.

The manor sinks into him before he can notice, slipping into his unconscious thoughts and guiding him as a skilled hypnotist.

 _Come_ , It calls, _get help from me_.

The man is as trusting as he is foolish, and doesn't think to question the foreign thoughts slotted neatly into his simple brain.

It savors his breakage the way it hadn't with the woman, hunger less pressing and appetites more for a _show_ than _dinner._ It sends tendrils of dreams mixed with memories spiraling one after another, each catalyzed by the man's growing discontent, the final _primal_ click of fear in his too trusting heart. It tastes the spice of it like smoke from a campfire, and as It always has, the manor indulges in it. Drapes Itself in it.

The pale door shuts silently, leaving behind yet another corpse dressed as a person.

* * *

The third time Dick doesn’t notice It, but It notices him. Red-litten windows wink at his back, shadows dancing gracefully to a harmony none but It hears. The pale door, dirty and dim, watches him carefully. Watches him meet a man in a gleaming red helmet, watches the snarls and vitriol and hate spread between them like blessings from a priest spread to an undeserving mass. It simmers quietly, indulgently, and It hums. It hums a melody the shadows change to, flickering and formless as they are, and the pale door creaks open a tad more.

Even a mansion of madness and decay such as It cannot call attention away from those enraptured by the past, and they are nothing if not mutually distracted.

* * *

“You killed,” Dick says tersely on a cold winter night, flakes of white glimmering snow tickling the exposed skin of his clenched jaw like parting kisses from a long-gone lover. “Again. You broke our agreement. Again.”

“Didn’t seal it with a kiss,” Jason counters with a wolfish grin, green eyes glowing at Dick the way they only do when satiated. When some kind of lust has been satisfied. Fucking or killing. Either works. “Besides, I said I’d _try_ not to kill. Didn’t say I’d succeed.”

Dick pinches the bridge of his nose, warding off the memory of Bruce doing the same thing in front of him at least twice a day.

“Autopsy showed twelve rounds around his pelvic region. Not to mention the broken bones from his fall off a building with no rooftop access.”

Jason, in another of his many tests on Dick’s patience, sanity, and overall mental wellbeing shrugs and pretends he doesn’t smell like gunpowder and death.

“Sounds like someone wanted to be thorough. Or they were sending a message.”

Dick clenches his fists, warding off the desire to throw him off the rooftop.

“Your bullets are _engraved_ , RH. You’re many things, but subtle isn’t one of them.”

Jason gives a throaty laugh that feels bitter as its air scratches Dick’s skin. It's a cold thing; one Dick recognizes for the mockery it is. The polar opposite of the warmth that once mirthful exhale of air had radiated with.

“World’s Greatest Detective, right?”

“I have to be.” It’s as much a confession as it is an accusation. Bitterness greeting bitterness. Dick would love to trust someone with Batman, would love to trust _Jason_ with Batman, but he knows where that would leave Gotham.

A graveyard full of sinners, and streets full of blood with innocents caught in the crossfire.

 _Unstable_ , a part of him whispers. Jason’s a livewire waiting for a spark. Lazarus hadn’t made madness out of him; it’d simply catalyzed the darkness already there.

Jason’s teeth flash.

“Replacement,” he drawls, “has a different story to tell. Seems Daddy wants his rags back from the great beyond.”

“He’s grieving and delusional,” Dick spits, “just like you. Bonding over it behind my back?”

Jason licks his lips.

“As much as I love that view, I’d rather do it at your front. Your angry face is just _delicious_.”

Dick takes a step towards him, temper simmering, not yet knowing what he intends to do. Before everything, before fallen fathers and lost sons and a street full of corpses and a stolen suit fashioned as the new Grim Reaper, Dick would’ve pressed his palm over Jason’s heart until they both calmed. Would’ve pressed his lips over Jason’s with a pulse in his throat and found home in their shared warmth.

Now…

Now he wants to find a home in their shared ice. In that absence like an ache between them, a sharp carving of what had been and what should still be were it not for things lost to time and bitterness. He wants stability, and the only Jason can ever realistically offer him is violence. Bloodshed.

“You gonna do something?” Jason says huskily, the right part of his lips crooked in that way Dick loves. _Loved_. “Paint me in our old colors?”

 _Black and blue_.

Bodies dropping like flies caught in a spider web made by his successor. Lies weaved expertly by the one who'd learned from the best. Jason had studied him obsessively before, and death hadn't dulled that knowledge. Dick hadn't thought he'd use it the way he had, pretending he'd cared about Dick's death any more than he had his life. Their brief affair hadn't dulled that knowledge, the ache that came with blood staining his name, the pain of corruption.

But, of all the bad blood between them, masquerading as Nightwing and murdering people in Dick's name is one of the things he's capable of forgiving in short bursts, ignoring in longer ones. But right now, he wants..he needs... 

Dick shivers, blinking away the snowflakes tangled in his lashes. Something…feels off.

“Why would I offer you that satisfaction after what you did to Damian? Why would I give you _anything_ after this?”

“You may play at righteous, _Batman_ , but you’re every bit as dirty as the rest of us.” Jason leans into him as he speaks, and Dick can smell the whiskey on his breath like a siren call. He’s momentarily struck with the desire to taste it, chase sensation until they’re both numb. His breath is hot on Dick’s ear, whisper the most dangerous kind of confession – a truthful one. “We both know about Blockbuster, after all. Don’t we?”

Dick’s right hook reacts faster than his mouth, staining Jason’s lips a familiar red.

The ghosts of the past shine up at him from Lazarus eyes; all crooked teeth and crooning threats and dark eyes and cinnamon perfume caught in the rain.

“Just like daddy ain’t ya?”

Dick doesn’t respond to the taunt, transfixed on the blood on his glove, on his suit. Even if only in memory.

He leaves without a word, captured by past recollections, and too in his own head to notice the manor’s whims spread like pollen in the wind. Jason’s downcast gaze and discarded veneer of smugness miss it too, blind as always to anything not named Dick Grayson.

* * *

“Thirteen reports of a gothic mansion on the outskirts of cemeteries, Master Dick. Most notably emanating an aura of discontent and gloom. Commissioner Gordon was at liberty to discuss this with the eye-witnesses, and confirmed the feelings originated out of more than distaste for the exterior design.”

Dick runs a gloved hand through his greasy hair, ignoring Alfred’s disapproving look. He hasn’t showered in a few days. Hasn’t slept in more. A few Arkham breakouts and a kidnapping ala Al Ghul featuring Slade fucking Wilson will do that to a person.

“Damian and I saw it on patrol a month or so ago. Didn’t think much of it. When did these reports start cropping up?”

Alfred takes the empty coffee cup from his hand, balancing it on his silver tray and replacing it with a cup of lavender tea. A hint if he’s ever seen one. As subtle as Alfred’s willing to be these days.

“The first one came three weeks ago, discounting your experience. The testimonies rapidly increased in frequency after the aforementioned appearance at various locations all over Gotham.”

Dick sighs, walking over to the holographic table and pulling up mapped and dated appearances with a few clicks of his hologlove.

“No discernable pattern,” he mutters. “No relation between the order of locations beyond _cemetery_. Anyone reported missing around the same time as the testimonies? Any strange crimes? Cult activity, maybe?”

Alfred hums, busying himself with the crumbs tracked over the Batcomputer’s keyboard.

“Miss Gordon mentioned a string of corpses recently. Nothing wrong with the bodies other than the lack of a pulse. That and the expression of terror set in their faces, of course.”

“Do we have the files?”

“I believe she sent them to you this morning, along with a request to go for coffee soon. She wishes to, as the young people call it, ‘catch up’.”

Dick grins at Alfred over his shoulder.

“You’re not that old yet.”

“Every one of you has aged me considerably, Master Dick. At this point, I’d be right to claim to be in my hundreds at the least.”

Dick laughs.

“Not thousands? Looks like Dami and I got work to do.”

Alfred merely sighs.

“I have all too much faith in your ability to do so, but might I suggest your attentions be directed towards some semblance of self-care? Miss Troy has been messaging, and it would be unwise to upset her with news of your new-found…habits.”

“Sicking Donna on me? That’s _cold_.”

“What will be cold,” the butler remarks, “will be your coffee if you are unable to sleep for a minimum of six hours. I’ve put sleeping pills at your bedside and will have a hearty breakfast prepared for you when you have showered and dressed.”

Dick rolls his eyes, pulling Alfred in for a half-hug.

“Yes, mom.”

Alfred, despite the typical British need for stoicism, accepts Dick's affectionate assault with grace.

"Off to bed with you now," the butler orders. "Master Damian, I imagine, will want to be appraised of the patrols he's missed once he returns from Miss Brown's in the morning."

Dick gives a half-hearted salute and accepts defeat in the form of a luxury mattress and some much-needed sleep.

* * *

Of course, all the rest in the world doesn’t exactly make the realization of what is obviously behind the dubbed “Mansion of Terror” any easier. Even when paired with a blissfully hot shower and all his favorite breakfast foods.

“It’s magic,” he says, head resting on the desk in front of him. “Isn’t it?”

“Indeed, it would appear so.”

Dick barely resists the urge to beat his head against the desk until Gotham is no longer his problem.

“Fucking hell.”

* * *

The wind is cool where It rests. Snow sits upon Its roofs in thick duvets that would be comforting if It could feel such sentiments. It feels…hungry, as all things inevitably do. Starved for new, starved for _change_. Screams and bones and black inky tendrils of puppeteered madness, pitiful cries of pathetic poultry…all achingly dull after a time. It hungers, yes, but It hungers for _more_.

It has seen the darkness in the detective, in the man with a red helmet, and It craves more than the appetizer their argument had been. It craves a banquet, a feast the likes of which It hasn’t had in centuries, millennia even. _Real_ darkness and madness and fear. Real moral reprehensibility and crumbling marble figures like those of Its long-rotted grounds.

There is a beauty in loss.

It craves...devastation from those unused to it. It craves a break in the strong, to mold them into weak, pitiful creatures. It will eat at what little light remains and corrode it completely.

As It desires, so shall it be.

* * *

Dick knows magic in the abstract; a concept, a theory, and an application. Typically, the application is pain, most often his, but sometimes, it's useful. Bruce had seen the value in harnessing it too, even trusted Zatanna with his secret identity and preparing countermeasures _for_ magic. Dick trusts her too, for different reasons, so it's her and Constantine he calls when the house is spotted again. Zatanna for the trust he has in her, and Constantine for his expertise in the more demonic (which, Dick is willing to bet, this house falls closer to than ghostly possession). Much to his surprise, they offer to arrive a few minutes after they hang up, and pop into the cave exactly when they said they would.

“So luv,” Constantine says with a shit-eating smirk, “Where’s the big ol’ nasty you need Johnny to take care of?”

Zatanna rolls her eyes at his side.

“John, we talked about the third person. It’s not cute.”

“Says you.”

“Says literally everyone.”

“The nasty,” Dick interjects before the argument can escalate (as they often do with these two), “is a house. Ancient. Pale door. Red windows. Gothic exterior. Leaving behind a string of terrified corpses in locations across Gotham. Ideas?”

Constantine flicks the ash of his cigarette at the ground, eyes darting around curiously. He sniffs the air, nose crinkles as he takes a long drag.

“Dark magic, that thing is. Not sure what kind yet. Any markings you’ve seen? Symbols? Engravings?”

Dick cocks his head.

“How can you tell?”

Constantine looks him over appraisingly, but unlike their normal meetings, it’s not paired with a thinly-veiled innuendo or offer of a _mind-blowing shag_ (Constantine’s words, of course, not Dick’s).

“You reek of it, and despite all the doom and gloom this poor city normally gives off, it isn’t often you come in contact with that kind of magic. Zee, check his aura. I want to see if I’m right.”

Zatanna raises hands coated in purple smoke obligingly, scanning him over with narrowed eyes.

“Your aura is _stained_ ,” she says, taking a step away from him and lowering her hands. He shivers, hearing another word in its place, a familiar sentiment. “Normally, it’s pinks and blues and indigos mixing together, but right now…it’s _black_. Veined with it, tainted with it…”

 _Poison_ , lecherously whispered in his ear, phantom breath ghosting over his neck. Dick shuts the thought down before it can spiral.

“So,” Constantine says, clapping his hands together with the cigarette rubbed into the ground. “We are dealin’ with one of my favorite of Hell’s cock-ups: you, mate, have yourself a demon possessing that sorry relic.”

Dick thinks of his sleep, disrupted as it always is, and quiet whispers behind a curtain of black. He thinks of phantom sensations, offered outside of their normal curfew, trailing up his arms and around his waist, ghosting over his lips.

He forces a half-grin, hoping it doesn't look as fake as it feels.

"I figured that much out for myself. What kind of demon are we talking, here? And how do we get rid of it?"

Constantine snorts.

"There's a tad problem with that, pretty boy. Need an identification 'fore we bugger it up, just in case. Some demons need more than others, bloody bastards that they are. First thing, any strange goings-on of late?"

"I've only seen it once," Dick mutters.

Zatanna sighs.

"That doesn't mean it wasn't following you around. Especially with your particular...uniqueness. Demons tend to form attachments with unique humans, offering them deals, or seeking some type of nourishment from them. The darkness in your aura is deeper rooted than it would be from one meeting alone, so I'm betting you just didn't notice it."

"Shit."

Constantine shrugs, sort of a _what can you do_ gesture.

"Prissy little things, but dead fun when it comes down to it. Tend to get bored after a certain number of ghosties and whatnot. Demons add a little zest."

"Zest with a side of homicide," Zatanna counters.

Constantine shrugs again, unapologetic as ever.

"People tend to die. At least things are interesting. But, back to the problem at hand. Grayson, have your emotions been out of sorts lately? Shortened temper? Knickers refusing to untwist?"

Dick looks away.

"Yeah, my temper has spiked a couple of times. And I sometimes get this...cold sense of dread or overbearing gloom, but I figured that was just the pollution."

Constantine and Zatanna exchange a look, but it's the blond who speaks up.

"'Fraid not, luv. Seems we got a fear demon of some sort up in that tragic relic. Let's have a look, shall we?"

* * *

It feels them even before they feel It, little beacons of light in a sea of darkness. It finds them curious, wonders if they are as strong as the Bat and the man with a red helmet, and so It lets them find It. Lets them wonder up Its paths set beneath an ocean of starlight, finding hope in something distant and far. It opens the pale door wide enough for them to enter, but It has a play of Its own.

It craves the rumbles of love fragmented and broken between the two men, so It draws in a fifth target, the fifth course for Its feast. A banquet long craved, consisting of the strong rather than the weak.

As they enter Its winding halls, It slams that pale door shut and lights the candles.

They will last, It thinks, long enough to truly entertain It. To satiate Its near insatiable hunger.

It shivers, spiderweb cracks blooming alongside the chandeliers on Its high ceilings as they brush over its gold-plated etching, the title It's adopted for nearly a century. It is the old time entombed, a telling of glory entrapped in a mansion by which any would fall prey should It so wish.

So It sits.

So It waits.

With flickering shadows moving to a discordant melody, with crimson flashes through boarded windows, with a pale door covered in grime.

It waits, and It watches, and It will know Its desires.

* * *

As he approaches the manor, Dick's mind drifts to Jason. 

Issues had cropped up one by one after they get together. Little things at first; petty irritations easily forgiven, inane habits that drove the other just a bit crazy before adjusting. Bigger things later; stacks of corpses red as roses that had carried a scent, lingering resentment never voiced or acknowledged from their shared murky past.

Jason couldn't say I love you and had nightmares he wouldn't talk about. Dick had memories he'd reflected on too often and things he'd pretended not to see for the sake of their failing relationship. Jason wouldn't trust him, and Dick _couldn't_ trust him.

Sex had been a bandage they'd pasted over their wounds all too often. Bandages instead of sutures – a temporary reprieve that never had been enough to last.

“I love you,” Dick had said, letting Jason pick him apart piece by piece with sweat-slick skin hot against his back, around his waist. Consuming him… _melding_ with him.

“I love you,” Dick had said, pale-faced and bloody, wrapping Jason’s ribs for the hundredth time, picking out bullets for the thousandth. Hearts in sync as Dick will press against the pulse, taking comfort in its regularity.

“I love you,” Dick had said, hoarse and teary-eyed in between nightmares and memories - the past and fear of the future - green eyes glowing at him like the beacon of a lighthouse, showing him the way home.

“I love you,” Dick had said, but Jason had never said _I love you_ back.

So Dick had given Jason one last chance, for his own sake.

_“Tell me you love me, just once, and I’ll stay.”  
_

_It's as much a plea as it is a demand. He's begging Jason to give him something,_ anything _, tangible to hold on to. To give him enough to know that this thing between them, this gravity they're both giving into, isn't just mutual self-destruction. He needs to know Jason loves him, because he can't do this anymore for someone who doesn't love him._

_The silence is deafening._

It doesn't matter anymore. It never had, really, beyond the pain that came with loss, the aches of longing for something that had never really been. Never really _would_ be. He pushes it away from him, somewhere distant and fuzzy and _not_ close enough to hurt, trudging forward despite the red flags popping up one after another. Despite the pit deep in his gut and ice in his veins replacing blood.

His pulse would race, he's sure, if the adrenaline weren't frozen like everything else.

Dick settles on forcing himself to calm, old exercises Bruce had taught him before everything, back in the beginning. When it had just been the two of them and Alfred. When life hadn't been so damn complicated.

"The door's open," Zatanna whispers to Constantine, hands poised in front of her defensively as she walks alongside them. "Is that good or bad?"

Constantine glares at the pale door.

"Damn thing wants us here. It let us find It."

"Cocky or confident?" Dick questions.

"Let's bloody well hope it's the former more so than the latter."

"Not prepared for good ol' execution via demon?"

Constantine's scowl dances over the room through the widening crack the door leaves in its wake, tugging a cigarette out and lighting it with a shaking hand.

"Not _bloody_ likely. Hell's no paradise. Come on."

They follow Constantine into the room, eyes dancing over the shadowed walls and flickers of light, the chandeliers and signs of wealth Dick can recognize as poorly maintained versions of what Wayne Manor contains. Tarnished silver candelabras that flicker out when they approach, cracked walls like the stones outside, a pervading scent of musk and rot conveying the overall _gloom_ pretty damn well even without the whole demon-magic angle.

Of course, the door slams shut like every Hollywood cliche with a Jason in front of it.

Dick thinks he'd prefer the one with the chainsaw.

“Well,” Jason says snippily, “this isn’t fuckin’ good.”

It’s the understatement of the century.

Dick directs him a look somewhere between _no shit Sherlock_ and _I really really hope the monster-demon gives you tentacles again you stupid bastard._ He doubts Jason gets it though since Dick hadn't bothered filling him in on it. Something about Bat business not being Jason's business anymore after their most reason fight. It had made sense before now, but now he's thinking he probably should've at least told Jason as a warning. It's not like he wants him dead, after all.

The first time had broken him in ways he still hasn't recovered from. He doubts he ever will because every time he gets close, that stupid red mouth laughs and he breaks all over again.

"Todd," Constantine greets evenly, taking another drag. Jason offers him a nod without taking his eyes off Dick, some kind of silent staring contest Dick won't lose. The house hums around them, air thick and warming like smoke as Zatanna begins to cough.

"What-?"

" _Fuck_ ," Constantine curses. "Bloody _buggering_ fuck. It's an Alp demon, of course it is!"

Before Dick can ask what exactly an Alp demon is, darkness overtakes his vision, and he knows no more.

* * *

_A Homo_ _magi_ _,_ It thinks, _what a treat._

* * *

Your hands are bound behind you as you stir, pinned to the cross like a butterfly's wings pinned to a board. You feel vulnerable, weak, and the duct tape is tight over your mouth. Your murmurs amount to nothing, forwards or backward, despite your desperation.

" _eerF me,_ " you try to command, but it comes out hoarse and soundless, a meaningless exhale of air as ordinary as any other. You're helpless, you realize, and it's then you smell the gasoline, the charred flesh burning around you.

You're in a house. _Your_ house, the one by Arkham Asylum where you'd grown up. Before your father's death. Before the reveal of your mother's lies. _Home_. It burns wherever you look, ashes and ashes crumbling around you like the empire of old. Skeletons are piled at your feet in neat stacks of varying sizes, some small enough to belong to a child, some big enough to be something other than human, but each as charred and black and _broken_ as the rest.

Death is thick and heavy in the air, intermingled with your fear, but even death does not separate them from you, their pain from yours. It runs through your blood, honey-thick and inseparable from you. You want to drain it, to carve it from your skin piece by aching piece, and that's when the low mumblings register as words.

“ _Help us,_ ” they cry, echoing around the caverns of your mind. Some of them are burning beside you, some of them have long since burned and died like unremarkable candles blown out. It's hard to see through the smoke, you can only see their edges, what they’ve left behind. It’s too late for them, only bones and ashes left, but you feel trepidation heavy and burdensome on your chest. 

These are your people, the last of them you somehow know, and you can't save them. For all your magic and talents and superheroism, you can't save your own people from the whims of those around them. Through the thick clouds of burning flesh around you, of _Homo magi_ burning as any human would, you are alone. You know you are alone in this home of destruction, alone and parentless with no father to save you. No mother to bother trying.

You hang your head, bound to a cross, and feel the first trickles of flames itch at your skin.

* * *

The blond tastes of Hell and Its kind. Like suffering and torment, self-inflicted. He knows Its games, but he can't stop them. He doesn't have the _strength_ , for all the blood in his hands and _any way works_ on his tongue, he can't.

* * *

Your skin itches, flakey and false around your uncooperative muscles and bones. A friend seeps into you, becomes you, but he doesn't ask. He doesn't bargain. He does, you do and don't want to. You would, would do anything for a friend if asked. 

It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but it does. 

So he's you - your cock, your skin, your lips, your scars - and he fucks his wife cause he wants to make an ankle-biter of his own and wants forgiveness rather than permission. 

And that's fine. It's bloody brill. You accept it as you realize it, trapped in between the two of them like a third wheel in a threesome, and you forgive him as they make their baby with your parts.

This... _reminder_ doesn't matter. You know what it's like to not be at home in your own skin, to have someone else take it as their own, so you adjust. Big bloody deal. Tough it out and all that.

A blink, and good ol' Abby is gone. Swamp's back in his own skin and you're yourself, not that it's much better.

Because it's Zee now in front of you, dressed like Hell with Luci's smile, and you love her. You fucking love her so much it takes your worthless breath away, and you know you're like that toxin you use to drown out everything else. You're the poison that'll kill her, a fuck up of the highest order.

 _You're a bad penny, John Constantine_ , everyone always tells you, and you know it. You know death like you know Zatanna's skin in moonlight, blackberries and sugar and that musky scent of magic and sex. You know death like you know your magic. It follows you around like a stain you can't scrub off, like a scent you can't _wash_ off because of who you are at your core. So she smiles at you, you and your conman grin and hunger for _more more more_ (magic, danger, life, _everything_ ) and you feel every bit the slime you've always been called. 

Still, you love her. Can't help loving her. You loved your parents too, didn't you? Look where it left them.

Her hand's outstretched towards you, and you lean into her, leech at her warmth, take comfort in her love. 

You'll do everything for her but change. Anything for her but change. Because you can't anymore. You're set in stone, aren't you? You know this isn't real, but that doesn't change anything, because you _are_ your nightmares. Your fears. Your dread.

Zatanna's skin flakes away like ashes as she touches you, and still, she won't pull away. Still you take, take, take. Still you selfishly love.

Trails of lovelorn corpses. Trails of death and damage and Hell on your heels, demon in your veins, and still you love her.

In the end, even her bones don't stay, so corrosive you are.

* * *

The man with the red helmet glows, dangerous and volatile and utterly perfect for Its plans. It hears the screams of the first two, the cries and pleas, and It shudders in pleasure as it prepares for the third piece added to Its symphony.

* * *

You can't breathe. You can't breathe. It's green and black and brown and _coarse_ and soft. It's cool, water lapping around your skin and healing scars from a madman, and it's suffocating, dirt and grass and darkness boxing you in and filling your mouth with granules you choke on. It's Lazarus and it's your grave, and you pound on everything around you desperately, clawing and scratching and screaming to be _free,_ to _breathe,_ because you've already died once and you can't die again. You can't. You _can't_.

And your fist breaks through to air, you gasp it in greedily with bloodied hands. Dirt sits on your tongue because you can't swallow it or you'll choke, and you can't throw it up because you aren't able to. You try, dry heaving and panting, but it still lingers. You scrape it off with dirty fingers, but still you taste it, still it itches and scratches along your throat and mouth and _tastebuds_.

Then, blood replaces it. You've scratched too much, too hard, and your teeth ache as it pools in your mouth, slick against the walls of your throat. You're on your back, bruised and more flesh than person, and you're choking on your blood and your grave dirt and think you're going to die.

 _Please,_ you want to beg, but there's no one to beg, is there? God? _Bruce_? Dick?

None of them really care, and you don't believe in any of them anyway. They won't save you because you don't matter. You're an unnamed casualty in the war on crime. You're a replaceable soldier in rotating ranks under Batman's command. You're a result and a consequence and a warning, but you aren't a _person_. You're a weapon and a catalyst and a chess piece but you aren't _human_.

You've loved and lost but you are a monster now, right? Dick hates you because you made him because he can't accept you and you can't accept that.

You kill because you want to, you think it right, and the corpses seem to sit around you as you choke pathetically. As your second death comes because yet again, no one was there. No one was close. No one noticed soon enough.

The corpses stack higher than the stars, blocking out the sky with crimson and rot. Decay and deformed bodies and heads because, oh yeah, you'd done that.

Demon brat stares at you too, small and frail on top of your resumes done on human-paper. He stares at you with a bullet in his spine and useless legs and maybe one in his brain because Bruce's gone and you didn't handle that well. Replacement stares at you with a batarang in his chest, with _HIS_ suit on you and on him, and he's dead too. He's dead and Demon's dead, and everyone is dead now. You did it. 

You killed them, right?

You saved Gotham, right?

Dick's eyes ask you that from his perch, posed as elegant in death as he had been in life. 

You must have, because he's dead and you're dead and everyone's dead, so what's left to harm or be harmed?

* * *

They succumb slowly to Its siren song of trauma and self-recriminations, so guilty and pained and eager to suffer. Almost sweet. Almost savory.

 _One left. One more soul to twist._

Madness is a give all reprieve to pain, after all.

Only the sane truly suffer.

* * *

It starts like a memory.

Sunlight beams through your drapes and you lift an arm to shield your eyes. A familiar gesture, because Jason's drapes neer block out the sunrays the way yours do.

"Hey, Pretty Bird," Jason greets you, pressing a smiling kiss to your lips without hesitation. His hand's warm where it smoothes over your chest, and you blush, heart racing, because you love this man. You love this man more than you know how to put in words. It's like a hunger, a craving, an ache every minute you aren't with him. 

Jason's still smiling when he pulls away, dimples prominent and freckles crinkled in a way you want to map out with your lips and eyes and hands. 

"I can feel your heart, ya know. Am I that hot?"

You snort, pressing a kiss to Jason's Adam's apple and resting your forehead along the curve of Jason's neck. Your boyfriend's arms come to wrap around you eagerly, quickly, and you feel safe. Protected. _Loved_.

"Don't be cocky," you mutter.

Jason laughs, and it sounds like the best thing in the world to you. You want to wrap yourself in it, feel it against every inch of your skin, and dive into the warmth it brings, pooling in your gut like fluttering butterflies. You feel like a schoolgirl with a crush, and it's ridiculous.

"Baby," he drawls, "you know I ain't compensating."

You bite his neck teasingly, laughing when he complains and pushes you off.

"What are you, a cat?"

"Does that make you my scratching post?"

"Fuck _no_."

You laugh again, feeling lighter than you have in ages. Perfectly content, until your stomach growls, and you look to Jason pleadingly. It's your best _oh poor me_ look, old rich lady tested and old rich lady approved. It works every time, even though Jason definitely sees it for the manipulation it is.

"Only," Jason says, "because I genuinely can't trust you to make anything other than eggs into something not radioactive."

"You love me," you tease, shrugging on Jason's oversized t-shirt and delighting in the way it smells like him.

Something in Jason's face softens, eyes teal and twinkling as he whispers:

"Yeah. I sure do. I love you."

You blink, and it all comes crashing down on you at once, a horrible chill taking the place of warmth.

Because Jason doesn't love you, and never will, so you awake.

* * *

Ashes and dirt fall as the building shakes, screams resounding through the halls on a sick loop. Dick's join them, but his aren't full of fear. Not a bit. He screams out of pain, pain for that cruel dream, and the loss of it. The pain of his harsh reality, where Bruce is dead and Jason's cold. Where Roy is distant and Wally's absent and Tim's gone and Babs isn't even a friend. He screams the way he hadn't let himself standing over Blockbuster's body. The way he hadn't under Catalina or Miriam. The way he hadn't on top of the Joker, blue painted crimson, light tainted dark, laughs wet and thickened with death.

A hideous throng of laughs had rushed out, could have rushed out forever that night, but no more smiles. 

Slowly, the other screams stop. The spiderweb cracks deepen, widen, and the house is shattering like Dick is. Like Dick always has, fragile pieces coated in resin and forced to hold, an ancient eyesore of trauma and scars and pain and things no one ever wants to talk about.

By the time Constantine and Zatanna and Jason rush out towards him, his throat's sore and hoarse and he's on his knees crying the way he hasn't been able to since his parents' funeral. When Jason offers a hand, offers his warmth, it feels like the greatest insult of all.

Because Jason will never love him, and Dick can't have something that would mean everything to him with someone it would mean nothing to.

He doesn't look at Jason as he leaves, Zatanna's arm around his shoulders and Constantine summoning a portal. And he feels no need to look at him any time soon.

* * *

“How did you know it wasn’t real?” Zatanna asks him quietly, wrapped in a blanket Alfred had offered her with the plate of cookies. Constantine’s arm is around her, eyes curious but mouth silent. “How did you break free when none of us could? What gave it away?”

 _Everything_ , he thinks.

He'd expected blood and violence. He'd expected bitter promises and broken hearts and cruel words and dead bodies. He knows all that. He's felt all that. He's _lived_ through all that, hard as living can be. It hadn't been pain and trauma and unspoken things and memories that could break him the way the manor had wanted him to break. Kindness, love, contentment...the things he can never truly have...those can break him like no other, leave him splintering like rotting wood.

“Jason said he loved me, in the dream. Nightmare. Hallucination. Whatever it was. That…that’s what gave it away.”

 _Tell me you love me, just once, and I’ll stay_ , he’d begged.

 _I love you_ , his nightmare had said.

And it’s a nightmare because of what it leaves in its wake, the cold hard truth of reality: Jason doesn’t love him, has never loved him, and that will never change. Dick's not foolish enough to hope and beg for anything else. Not anymore.

“Oh.” Zatanna exhales softly, because really, what else is there left to say?

The manor seeks corruption through what already exist. It can't corrupt what had never existed in the first place.

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me. i dare you. i thrive on the tears and suffering of mortals.
> 
> typos can be fixed tomorrow. Today's AK is too sleepy to do such an adult task.


End file.
